Round Robin Part 2

Ben BleiweissWednesday, April 02, 2008

ello everyone, and welcome back to Building on a Budget, the column dedicated to building decks for 30 tickets or less using Magic Online! We're in the middle of the first BoaB Round Robin tournament! I started by building a deck based upon Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Thornbite Staff (suggested by Fernando from Brazil). After playing a few games with that deck, I jumped to tinkering with a black-white control deck coming straight from the hands of MX3SERZE. When we left off last week, I had just posted a 4-1 record with MX3SERZE's deck, and was about to make some changes.

Many people pointed out that the biggest weakness of this deck was the low land count. I tend to agree—even after the changes I made last week, 21 lands is really low for a deck that needs to drop a land a turn the entire game (especially when I may be drawing multiple spells to play via Phyrexian Arena). This is a good time to bring up my article Deckbuilding 101: Five Tips for Better Deckbuilding from wayyyy back in June of 2006 (has it been that long?).

BoaB, the Non-Budgetary Robot. Missing since 1/1/08. Have you seen him? If so, click the email link below!

When I first got my hands on MX3SERZE's take on a black-white control deck, it broke Rule #1 (not enough lands—only twenty with the average mana cost of the deck coming in at a hefty 3.9), Rule #2 (63 cards—mathematically, you want to be at 60 unless you're playing Battle of Wits. Otherwise, you have less chance to draw any given card in your deck), and Rule #4 (the deck didn't get started with an offense until turn four, at the earliest).

I fixed #2 (taking the deck down to 60 cards) and #4 (added in lower-drop cards like Castigate, Phyrexian Arena, and Descendent of Kiyomaro), but I only partially fixed #1—I brought the land count from 20 to 21, but that's still not enough for this deck. As mentioned above, I really need to be able to drop a land every turn. Orzhov Basilica is great for this, because it means I get three land drops out of two lands (first, I play a Swamp. Then, I play the Basilica returning the Swamp. Then I replay the Swamp again). Rather than up the budget of this deck with any more fancy lands that produce black and white, I just decide to add two Swamps and a Plains. I haven't particularly had troubles getting the colors of land I need in previous games, I just haven't gotten enough lands, period.

The original version of MX3SERZE's deck had seven Wrath of God effects (one of them got left off the deck list last week, so it only showed six. Don't worry—this week's article is 300% more error-free than last week's!) The two games I lost so far this week (against beanie414's Sliver deck and Flywheel's Red-Green Beasts deck) highlight the need for some form of mass removal—especially in a black-white deck! Those two colors tend to get the most "kill everything at once" cards (as opposed to red, which gets the "deal damage to everything at once" cards).

If I were to further evolve MX3SERZE's black-white deck, I would likely move towards having at least a four-set of some Wrath of God effect, and take out the Hide // Seeks entirely—while they are a really nifty trick, unless you're playing against an obscure combo deck that only has a one-of on certain win conditions, taking a single copy of a single card out of your opponent's deck isn't going to win you many games. There are already ways to gain life in this deck (Descendant, Blind Hunter), so losing those three won't hurt too much.

As it is though, Flywheel's Beasts deck caught my eye in Game 9 of the last set of matches! I asked him for permission to evolve his deck, and permission was granted! Here's the deck list I was sent:

21 lands again seems low for a deck with an average mana cost of 3.5, and no mana accelerants at all. Without going into huge mathematical equations, one-third of the cards in the deck are land, meaning that you'll only see an average of about three lands in your first nine cards of the game. (Yes, I know this is not the exact odds, but it's close enough to make this argument). The average mana cost of the deck is higher than this amount, so often you'll be stuck with cards in hand (much less being able to play multiple cards a turn).

Rule #2: Keep Close to 60 Cards

Again, there are 63 cards in this deck. There's no reason to go above 60—all it does is decrease your chances of drawing the cards you need / want the most when you need / want them the most! I think we can find three cards to cut from this deck, just to get down to 60.

Rule #3: Focus Your Goals, But Don't Be a Slave to Your Theme

Flywheel has a really good Beasts theme going here—Wirewood Savage and Æther Charge are two particularly potent non-Beast cards in a Beast deck. I also like the utility present in Hull Breach and the removal spells, but I wonder if there are better on-theme choices for these cards? Also, Steely Resolve seems a little unnecessary here—crunch my guys all you want, I'll make more!

Rule #4: Have a Curve

This deck starts at three mana and ends at five. In the meanwhile, there aren't many spells you can play early on in the game. This is fine, given that once turn three starts, you'll be dropping a creature a turn, and never stop putting on pressure from that point onwards. A little mana acceleration might go a long way here, just to throw that out in the open!

Rule #5: Enchant Creature Cards Are Not Your friends

Does not apply to this deck!

This deck has a very solid base, but the above mentions are keeping it from reaching a higher potential. Here's the changes I made to the deck, with the reasons listed:

Reason: In a 60 card deck, you want some degree of redundancy in your removal. The Incinerates and single Shock seem somewhat arbitrary in this deck—there isn't a great chance of drawing either one, and there doesn't seem to be a reason why there is one Shock over a third Incinerate... or vice versa. If Flywheel was having problems with one-drops, more Shocks would be the answer. If it was regenerators or three-toughness creatures, Incinerate. As it is, I'd rather run Contested Cliffs in the deck. It solves two problems at once—working more lands into the deck (three more lands, in this case), and it allows you to use those land slots as removal spells. Krosan Warchief can let you have your Beasts survive the Cliffs, if your Beasts aren't just outright bigger than your opponent's creatures to begin with.

Reason: Invasion / Planeshift / Apocalypse cards are worth a premium on Magic Online, as those sets were not in circulation for a very long time. Because of this, Hull Breach goes for about a ticket. There are other options to destroy an artifact or enchantment (though not as many to destroy both at once), and these are options that cost a fraction of the amount—Naturalize, Krosan Grip, and the such. Well, this is a Beast deck—why not run Naturalize on a 4/4 body in the inimitable Indrik Stomphowler? It servers a dual purpose in the deck—to budgetize the artifact/enchantment removal for the deck, and to add another Beast to the deck!

Reason: Steely Resolve is in the deck to keep a creature type untargetable. Well, it seems just as good to keep one creature at a time untargetable, especially since Steely Resolve A) doesn't stop mass removal, and B) keeps you from targeting your own Beasts with things like Krosan Warchief and Contested Cliffs. Giving your Beasts haste (especially since they are kind of slow to begin with) seems ideal, so Lightning Greaves is a great swap straight in for Resolve—haste is definitely a trade this deck wants to make in exchange for mass-untargetablility.

Reason: I needed to cut three cards from this deck entirely, to bring it down to 60 cards. I already added five Beasts (Fangren Firstborn and 4 Stomphowler), so losing 10 Beasts (2 Pulse of the Tangle, 4 Hunting Moa, 4 Petravark) seems all right for now, especially given that several Beasts let me play multiple other Beasts (Avarax, Beast Attack). I really liked (feared) Fangren Firstborn when I played against it, and it is even better with Lightning Greaves in the deck (speeding up not only the Firstborn, but every other attacking creature at the time). Pulse of the Tangle seemed like the weakest Beast in the deck—it would almost never "buyback," since this deck is never going to want to hold back creatures. Petravark also seemed kind of weak—if I wanted to outright destroy lands, I could do better than a 2/2 creature for four mana (which is a really, really small body for a Beast).

I was happy with how the Beast deck performed, and my possible other tunings to that deck would involve possibly adding a little money to the deck in the form of either Greater Gargadon (3 tickets each), or Ravenous Baloth (3 tickets each), plus maybe some removal so that I didn't die to things like the mass of weenies in lordofducks's deck. Speaking of which:

It's still in progress and started as a green token deck with mana fixers for watch and rites a couple years ago. Last week it turned primarily blue (with Faeries) and a splash of red (for Rites) with a bit of control. Now it's straight up blue and red (obviously) and I just added Empty the Warrens a couple hours ago. It really doesn't need Warrens, but it seems to be helping.

If you didn't notice, it's a straight-up pauper deck. I've played in a couple PDC tourneys over the past few years under (presently) lordofducks and other names, not too often though.

I honestly love building decks more than I do playing. :)

For those not familiar, PDC stands for Pauper Deck Challenge. Pauper decks are all-common decks—no uncommons or rares allowed! In fact, if a card is not common in that format, you can't play it, even if it's common in other formats! (For instance—Tribal Flames is common in Planeshift, and "timeshifted" in Time Spiral. You can't play Tribal Flames in Standard PDC, because there is no common version in Standard. You can play either version ("timeshifted" or Planeshift) in Extended, since there is a common version that exists in that format).

BOAB Note of the week: Note that the seventeen Snow-Covered lands in this deck make it more expensive than the entire Beasts deck, which contained 7 rares and 28 uncommons! Remember, common doesn't necessarily mean budget... it just means common!

Either way, for the sake of knocking this deck down to a true pauper's cost, I took out all seventeen snow lands and the four Skreds (the only reason for the snow lands to begin with) and added in seventeen basic lands and four Incinerates, making this deck into a truly budget deck (less than five tickets to build). For the sake of this leg of the Round Robin, I decided to keep this deck pauper, even if other cards that would be good for the deck (e.g. Firecat Blitz, a usual partner with Rites of Initiation) were present!

I get down Looter il-kor and Sparksmith, and he uses Flame-Tongue Kavu to kill my Sparksmith. He then drops Flaring Flame-Kin, and I answer by playing Ponder and then Empty the Warrens. He puts Taste of Mayhem on his Flame-Kin and then drops Spikeshot Goblin. I evoke Mulldrifter, get two more cards in hand, attack with everyone, and draw a block from his Spikeshot. This allows me to discard four cards from my hand, dealing 20 damage with my unblocked guys.

Izzet Boilerworks is fantastic in a deck that wants to keep up number of cards in hand for the sake of a game-ending Rites—every card you have left is important for the win! I also want to get up to four Rites—it is the kill condition in this deck, and it doesn't make sense to have less than four of them.

Even though I've won 80% of my games so far with lordofducks's blue-red Initiation deck, I feel like there may be better Pauper (common) choices for both token generation and possible card-drawing. Think Twice, or maybe more of a storm engine (fueled by Rite of Flame or set up with Sage of Epityr) might be the way to go. Tune in next week to see how I tune up the Pauper Rites of Initiation deck, and continue on with the Round Robin!